Jakub Kicinski on Sunday sent out the big set of networking subsystem updates heading into the Linux 6.17 kernel. From high-end enterprise and data center hardware down to consumer Ethernet and WiFi devices, the Linux networking space continues to be as busy as ever.
In going through the hundreds of new networking patches for the Linux 6.17 merge window, some of the most interesting wired and wireless networking changes for this next kernel release include:
– Various ongoing work around WiFI 7 and Extremely High Throughput (EHT), such as with the Qualcomm Ath12k driver.
– The Broadcom BNGE driver is merged for supporting new Broadcom 800G Ethernet devices with Broadcom BCM5770X hardware.
– For the existing Broadcom BNXT driver there is now support for zero-copy transmit to DMA-BUF memory for easier and more efficient sharing of packets with other drivers/hardware.
– The Broadcom B53 driver meanwhile adds support for BCM5325 switches.
– The Broadcom brcm80211 WiFi driver adds support for the SDI-based BCM43751.
– The NVIDIA Mellanox code has new zero-copy receive and transmit interfaces for DMA-BUF and IO_uring usage.
– The Intel networking code is preparing for live VM migration handling, flow steering in IDPF, and other enhancements.
– The Intel PCIe Bluetooth driver adds support for Function Level Reset (FLR).
– The Marvell Cavium driver code has added support for C20K Octeon chips.
– The Realtek R8169 driver enables Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) at 5 Gbps speeds for the RTL8126 chipset.
– The Realtek RTW89 WiFi driver added support for the RTL8851BU and RTL8852BU USB devices.
– The AMD XGBE driver adds support for hardware timestamping and PTP clock support.
– A new driver is added for the Microchip ZL3073x DPLL.
– The Linux WiFi code has extended regulatory info support for 6GHz WiFi.
– The IBM NETIUCV driver is being removed as the Inter-User Communication Vehicle (IUCV) for z/VM communication.
– Multi-cast routing is now allowed to take effect for locally-generated packets.
– The Management Component Transport Protocol (MCTP) support now allows for gateway routing.
More details on all of the networking changes readied for Linux 6.17 via this pull.
